1 Reply Latest reply: Jun 12, 2013 9:52 AM by Dave Merchant RSS

    Full Compass logo mystery

    rdale1961 Community Member

      I am a designer with Full Compass Systems. We are having some issues with our logo (vector illustrator files), and only when we provide our logo to our b2b partners so that they can add our brand to their print ads, there are elements that have been disappearing or are modified in the pdf Ad file.

       

      Our logo is composed of some flat colored shapes, and some outlined type which generally are no problem. There is a 3D modelled element (a 3D ball) that tends to have issues. I'm guessing it was built using an earlier version (CS, CS2, or CS3) of AI using the 3D tool. This ball element will show up in a pdf Ad proof with the ball flattened in appearance (no 3D modelling that it should have) or it will disappear entirely, sometimes it develops a white stroke around it, the rest of the logo is fine.

       

      We don't know if the Ads were built in AI or in InDesign. Is there a way in Acrobat to tell what kind of application file was exported as the pdf? I opened the questionable pdf in AI, and our logo .eps does not show up in links, nor does it export with export all images. It appears as outlines. We provide the logo to Advertisers as an AI vector (CS3), but we are suspecting that some are setting the logo as a smart object (incorrectly) since vectors are scalable, and the smart object is causing these issues somehow. A suggested solution was to output the logo as a raster file at 600ppi in one flat layer to prevent these issues.

       

      We recently upgraded from CS3 apps to CS6, is there a potential solution in CS6?

        • 1. Re: Full Compass logo mystery
          Dave Merchant CommunityMVP

          You can tell what was used to create the PDF by looking at the document properties (CMD+D or Ctrl+D).

           

          3D in Illustrator is applied as a live appearance, so the shape actually drawn on the artboard remains 2D (as you can see in the icons for the layers panel). Of course PDF files don't support a 'make this thing 3D' command, so you need to use Expand Appearance on the Object menu to flatten the 'live' effect into a series of 2D shapes before exporting to PDF.